When I talk with people who own firearms, they seem to fit into a few categories…

Gift Owner…someone who was given a gun as a gift or from a relative

Casual Owner…has a firearm (or two) but rarely shoots

Active Owner…someone one or more firearms and shoots regularly

Collector Owner…has several firearms and may or may not shoot regularly

Prepared Owner…owns one or more gun, has had extensive training, shoots often, is prepared for a “deadly force” type of event

Regardless of the type of owner you might be today, I would recommend every gun owner consider becoming a Prepared Owner. Having a firearm is not only a right (2nd Amendment) but it is also a responsibility. A responsibility as well since owning a firearm can have life threatening abilities. If you have a firearm for any reason, you either need to be prepared to use it or just lock it away where no one can easily access it.

Let me share with you a real life event for illustration. A friend of mine’s brother and his family were attacked and held at gun point while they were being robbed. One night someone was knocking at the door. When they asked who it was they kicked it in (usually much easier than most people think) and two men entered the house. He was there with two older children and one younger one.

It was clear one of the men was high on something as he was acting irrationally and just wanted to shoot someone if they got out of line. Fortunately they cooperated and were simply tied up and gagged while they robbed their house of valuables. They left behind a wake of fear and damage.

The father of the family was a gun owner…a Casual Owner as described above. He had a 9mm hand gun locked away in a safe in the house. He had shot it enough he was capable of loading and shooting…he just couldn’t get to the gun in time to do anything with it. He wasn’t a prepared gun owner and didn’t have a specific plan of how he was going to access the firearm in case of emergency. He tried to get to it but they caught him before he could get there.

Whether it would have been a good thing or not to have access to his firearm, we will never know. He wishes he had been able to reach it…but he couldn’t. So the family was beaten up a bit and terrorized for life by the incident. But he was a gun owner…just not a prepared one.

Being prepared isn’t all about knowing how to shoot a firearm. It’s more. It’s about being trained to shoot it confidently and accurately. It’s about knowing how to get to it quickly should an incident occur. It’s about knowing the law and what you can and can’t do if you do get to the firearm and start shooting. It’s about knowing what your rights are after a shooting and how to contact legal counsel while you are being taken into custody while the police figure out what really happened. It’s about being prepared…a Prepared Gun Owner. Something to consider, determine which type you are today, and how you can move to become a Prepared Owner.

With a society that is chocked full of simulations, live fire ranges, extensive gun handling training, and self-defense skills, you may feel you are much better prepared to react in a violent or life-endangering situation. Maybe…

There is no question that being better trained in the use of your firearm is an important step in gun ownership…no one would disagree. And today there are many different ways to get this training. But even with all the training you might have received, do you still completely understand the law and the legal implications of your actions? Maybe not…

One of the things I see and hear about all the time is how much training someone has had in how to use their firearm(s) appropriately. They have been trained and possibly even had some situation training. All good. But regardless of how well you know “how” to use your firearm, it is even more critical to understand “when” to use your firearm. Are you within the law or not?

For example, there was a case recently in Topeka, Kansas where a man who was armed aided in the arrest of the criminals who were trying to rob a gun shop of firearms and cash. The story was in WIBW and talked about the Topeka man who says the new gun law allowed him to delay armed robbery. As the story goes, Joey Tapley was in a gun shop when two teenagers and a woman started taking guns and cash out of the store. Tapley followed and as they were getting ready to get away told them to drop their firearms and they did and then ran. They were later caught and arrested as it gave the police time to get to the scene.

Tapley was carrying a concealed firearm without a permit…one of only 7 states that allowed this to happen. Just 2 weeks ago, Governor Brownback approved the law that is now in effect. Did Joey know the law or just happen to be within it? And had the governor not signed this law and he was carrying a concealed carry weapon, he too would have been arrested along with the real criminals. Knowing exactly what the law in our state surrounding owning and carrying firearms is even more critical today. Has this not been the case in Topeka, a well-intentioned citizen who was carrying a firearm at just the right time to stop a crime could have been part of the crime in a different way.

Knowing our state laws is more important today than ever before. Understanding what you can and can’t do within the law has nothing to do with how well you may be trained in how to use the firearm. In Joey Tapley’s case, all the training in the world wouldn’t have kept him out of jail if he didn’t know the current laws.

For me, understanding the law should be one of the first, if not the first, things you do when you own a firearm. Why take your chances of going from Good Samaritan to criminal…after you saved the day…just because you didn’t understand the law. But once you understand it…then, like Joey, you can do what’s right and prevent or stop something bad from happening.

The responsibility of owning a gun is huge…it carries consequences of life and death. Everyone knows it and yet still some (maybe many) take it lightly. Gun ownership isn’t a right, it is a privilege. But just like anything else we have in our life, if we don’t take care of this right we lose the privilege.

In a recent article in the Washington Times, Bernie Sanders, Democratic candidate, said, “99.9 percent of gun owners obey the law.” While I don’t have any basis to know if this statistic is true or not, the point is an interesting one for all gun owners. And it doesn’t matter your political persuasion or not in this discussion…it isn’t about Bernie.
For the sake of argument, let’s say it is true. If it is true, then this would mean that less than one percent of the gun owners today disobey the law. While we know that probably isn’t accurate, it makes a very important point. Bernie is essentially saying that it isn’t the gun owners that are causing the issues… it’s those that get guns illegally and then use them in a crime.

He makes a very interesting and valid point in his discussion. Both sides of the gun debate dig in and don’t come to some type of agreement that is good for all communities. And that someone with a gun in his state of Vermont vs. one in Los Angeles or Chicago is very different. In Vermont they are used for hunting and in the other two cities they are used for gang violence. This feeds the divide between the two extremes in the discussion.

If gun owners were more knowledgeable and responsible about their ownership and their possession and transfer, this could make an impact on gun violence. Knowing what you can and can’t do with your firearms and then taking the precautions…both physically and with training, could help keep more firearms out of the criminal’s hands. In the end, both sides would support any measure that helped prevent criminals from easy access to firearms.

One of the tools we have at our fingertips to help every gun owner is a gun trust. Putting your firearms in a special gun trust helps you to own and transfer firearms legally and efficiently. Receiving the right kind of training to know how to use and secure your firearms adds a different, but very important dimension to the cause. When you add these two together, you have a very powerful component to what Bernie is trying to get accomplished.

So whether you support Bernie or not isn’t the issue…being a responsible gun owner puts you in the 99.9 percent that he is talking about and we significantly lower the opportunity for the other .1 percent to have access to our firearms.

Whether we like it or not, the law is not very forgiving when it comes to firearms. We aren’t given a warning and a slap on the wrist for doing something wrong, like with a traffic violation or some other minor infraction. Nope…you go straight to jail and don’t get to go past GO (using the Monopoly game analogy). If anything, this has become even more the case than it was say 100 years ago.

So the key is to make sure we really understand the law when it comes to firearms and obey it the way it was written. If we disagree with it, then we need to deal with our legislative bodies and try to get something changed. But understanding it is upon us and as they say, ignorance is no excuse when it comes to the law. The right we have to possess firearms simply means we have the responsibility to understand the law.

He and a group of his friends made plans to go to New Jersey to help out their citizens with some disaster relief efforts. So he and his friends packed up and headed up north. Being a law abiding gun owner (and citizen), he also packed his firearm. Everything was great until he was in New Jersey.

While he and his team were waiting in a parking lot for instructions about where they were to be deployed to help out, a police officer pulled up behind their truck and inquired as to what they were doing. He explained why they were there and being the law abiding citizen he was, he gave him his ID and also disclosed that he had a firearm in the truck. He was then arrested.

You see…New Jersey, unlike many other states, has specific laws against the right to carry a firearm with you or in your vehicle. Not knowing the law in New Jersey was different than North Carolina, he violated their local law and was not given a warning but was arrested. It is a class 2 felony in New Jersey. Fortunately, he is now home after posting a $25,000 bond. It isn’t over, he is just home.

Similar to the Shaneen Allen story with similar elements, the gun law isn’t very forgiving. You might remember that she was actually sentenced to prison and was only pardoned at the last minute by Governor Chris Christie. That is also about the only thing that will get Brian off as well.

While this is certainly an unfortunate story, it didn’t have to turn out this way. Had Brian fully understood the gun laws in New Jersey (and the other states he drove through) he would have realized they have very strict gun laws. This could have caused him to make a different decision and he wouldn’t be facing a life-changing event. Regardless of the state we live in, it is our responsibility to understand the laws of any state we are going to…before we get there. Ask your attorney to help…that is our job to understand the law. If your attorney doesn’t know, give me a call and I will be happy to either find out or connect you with an attorney in the other state who can help you. Just to be like Brian and “think” you know what you might not know. Today, with all our technology, there is not excuse not to be informed.

This isn’t a new topic…but it might be for some of you. The talk about “Gun Insurance” has come up before but never really landed anywhere permanent. But now there is some more resurgence about it…is it political or real?

There has always been talk about having firearm insurance to protect someone against the loss of a firearm and the use of the firearm in a crime. This is different than the insurance you might have if your gun is stolen from you and you want the insurance company to reimburse you for it. This is adding insurance into the mix of gun control and more responsibility for gun owners.

"Carry your guns, but have your insurance," says Representative Mary Flowers (D), who is pushing the bill. She's taking it a step further than just insurance at gun ranges. She believes a gun owner should be liable "if he ... loses his gun in a situation where someone else can get it and causes someone else harm."

This is basically aimed at offering a payout to the victims of a shooting by the person who’s gun was used in the crime. Is this the right path or is it just another way to discourage gun ownership and improve the position supporting gun control? You can be the judge of it as you read through what it entails and what it would mean to you as a gun owner.

Why do we care about this in our state? Simple…because legislators love the lemming effect and what they see happen in one state gets picked up by another state and before you know it we have the same thing on our ballots or being put into law. It is more apparent when it comes to gun law as you have seen from many of my past posts from laws being passed by other states. It’s important to watch others to see what the future holds for all of us.

While most changes are less significant, requiring every gun owner to carry liability insurance would not be inexpensive and could be one of those where people don’t realize they have to comply…and that usually means someone is getting arrested when it comes to gun laws. I will keep you updated as changes like these happen so you can keep them on your radar for future discussions. That’s the beauty of having a gun law blog and being able to share (and discuss) trending issues for gun owners.

My colleague, Dennis Brislawn in Seattle, was at the Oregon Gun Show the other day and had an interesting conversation with a gun owner I wanted to share because he isn’t the only one with this question or situation. While it was a bit morbid and sad, it was also very enlightening to give him a bit more peace in his situation.

Imagine coming home from an evening out… and finding your front door kicked in. What would you do? That sense of outrage is there, anger, mixed with some fear about what you will find. Is the burglar still inside? What was taken…?
The decision you make in the next few minutes will affect your life for days, months, even until the rest of your life.

There was an incredible surge of gun purchases immediately following the attack in Aurora, Colorado – a surge to the tune of a 43.5% increase within the following week. Not completely unexpected but certain a huge jump according to gun shop owners. In an article in NBCNEWS.com, Background check applications for gun buys surge in Colorado, they talked about the amount of the increase over the following 3-day period. Does this make you nervous or are you happy to see more guns in society in the wake of such a horrific event?